EUGENE ONEGIN
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Eugene Onegin makes clear why Tchaikovsky is not numbered among the Russian nationalist composers known as “the five”: Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov. The musical style of the entire opera is from somewhere well west of the Vistula, with the possible exception of the obligatory “happy Russian peasant” chorus at the top of the first act. This is not per se a fault, as a lot can be said for cosmopolitanism. But Tchaikovsky, with the assistance of colibrettist Konstantin Shilovsky, chose a thoroughly Russian story line, Pushkin’s famed novel in verse. This poem is the epitome of an early-19th-century perverse, whining romanticism–the doctrine that it is impossible to be both a thinking and feeling being, and that faced with a choice between the two, feeling is better. Leaven this with Russian fatalism and Onegin becomes a kind of Slavic Werther, steeped in ennui and despair, but without the good taste to commit suicide.
In act one Onegin spurns the girlish love of Tatiana on the grounds that he is unsuited to domesticity and would therefore make her unhappy. As the opera unfolds, one is inclined to agree with him. In act two Onegin provokes a fight with his best friend, the poet Lensky, by flirting with Lensky’s fiancee, Tatiana’s sister Olga. Later, after a maudlin reverie by Lensky, an angst-ridden romantic adolescent, they duel, and Onegin contrives to kill the hapless scribbler. (There is a historical irony in this plot element, since Pushkin himself was killed in just such a duel.) In the final act, Onegin, after six years of aimless drifting, again meets Tatiana, who is now married to old Prince Gremin. In true 19th-century form, Onegin suddenly and for no apparent reason decides that the girl he spurned is now the key to his happiness and redemption. (Wagner would have at least thrown in a magic potion.) Tatiana is correct when she implies that the only reason Onegin is now interested in her is that he can make a big splash by running off with a distinguished man’s wife. After some vacillating, she turns him down.
